You sound like me. My first experience of PvP was gank-fests leveling as alliance on Jaedenar, a horribly horde dominated pvp server in late BC. When my friends and I started, they picked a server at random, not knowing the difference any of that made. We’re talking stupifying levels of gank-tarded, like three 60’s camping your level 23 for more than an hour. How can anyone be THAT bored? Then, in came the DK, and they didn’t just camp you, they camped your entire quest hub keeping all NPC’s dead for hours at a time.
This soured me to the very existence of PvP, so much so, that even contemplating voluntarily engaging in PvP felt like a morally deficient behavior. Eventually, I paid to move 9 characters to a non-pvp server, forcing my friends to follow or live with the fact we wouldn’t be able to play together. Jaedenar overall population was in a terrible place by that point, and since it was 90% horde, the alliance side was BAD, so the move was good, regardless of PvP.
However, I softened on my objections to PvP, and have dabbled some in most expansions, including Wrath. Like you, I’m bad at it, largely due to a serious lack of experience with it. Here are my very amateur observations:
Some classes are always respectable:
Mage
Warlock
Rogue
Priest
Honorable mentions: Warrior
I’ve heard WW Monk always does well in 1 v 1 tournaments, but, isn’t always good in teams.
However, of those, the only ones I’ve had any success with in my limited dabbling is warrior. The skill floor, meaning the minimum skill necessary to be average or a little above, seems a little higher on those. Most are a little squishy unless you start to get better with more advanced escape and hit and run tactics.
The classes I’ve had the most luck with a low skill level:
Warrior
Resto Shaman
I’ve probably played more paladin PvP than anything, largely because it’s been my main and so I know it best. Most of the time, it hasn’t felt good. Right now, however, it is in a pretty good spot and would be a good class to play. Having said that, my experience is that paladin never gets to stay strong for long except for Holy. With a patch coming sooner rather than later and starting so late in the season, you MIGHT be playing catch up, only to get a nerf bat to the groin before you actually get caught up.
The rest all seem to have their day in the sun, and their days in the dark. I think the previous suggestions of a melee are good, and I would add that healers with lower cast times can be played to a fun level without a ton of skill, too. Resto shaman, druid and disc priest. You will have to get good at avoiding getting kicked and escaping from getting focused to heal, but, that’s actually true of anything sometimes…except ret pally when it’s bad. Man, the times when ret was bad, and the class has no mobility, you would practically get either immediately deleted or ignored for last since you were just rolling around in your wheelchair.
PvP is awful this xpac…